Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Nonsense

Last night I was at a poetry reading and a fellow was reading a poem in Spanish. Now I only remember minute snippets of high school Spanish so in a sense it was a blur of words - yet there was a precision in his delivery. Despite lack of comprehension on my part there was a sharpness of content being communicated and expressed before my very eyes and indeed I was “looking” at words much as one would a sign post or even a strange plant or tree. I’ve been tossing around the idea lately of learning a foreign language, some thing that it is far removed from English in structure, some thing more ancient or based in different alpha characters or symbols, perhaps Sanskrit, Hebrew, or Arabic. I’m often intrigued by how a language that is structured differently affects the thought process of those who speak it. So, by learning a new language and working towards fluency in that, I’m curious how stepping out of the gestalt of my English tongue, and processing ideas through a different linguistic construct, will affect my expression of ideas through writing. I’m feeling more and more serious about this idea. I have a lot on my plate now but perhaps I ought to start clearing some room to embrace this long term experiment. I believe it was Samuel Beckett who wrote all of his plays in French. It not being his native tongue, it forced him to truly think about each line, each word, each thought. In the end I find it quite miraculous, that as animals, we can even deduce ideas and emotions from words. But listening to a cat’s meow, dolphin’s chuckle, bird caw, perhaps there are subtleties of timbre that are conveying a different construction of language. My cat must be telling me something when he purrs. I have chalked the cat’s purr to being their physical equivalent a sort of laughter, a giggle. My good friend Ian Randall once stated on a drunken evening, King Cobra peeking from the paper bag, “Language is just agreed upon nonsense.”

Monday, November 23, 2009

Evacuation


Last night I dreamed that the north side of Chicago needed to be evacuated due to spraying some chemical to burn a potential virus. We were given vouchers by the city to stay in a hotel downtown, downtown had been evacuated and there was a strange musical "residents"going on. The logic was confusing as to how this would prevent disease, it would just be spreading the disease to more places I thought. But they had some scientific answer planned on developing immunity by slight exposure and evacuation for spraying a residual chemical that would serve as anti bodies when we digested or breathed it in. Anyway, my girlfriend and I headed down town and packed our bags for a week. I realized I forgot my swim suit (the hotel had a pool and jacuzzi - and quite a view) but could not get back into my apartment for it was sealed for the time being. Unfortunately none of the stores downtown had any swim suits, apparently. I ended up having an issues with the valet when I returned from my swim suit hunt and it took awhile for a space to clear up, so I waited. When this had been taken care of, I entered the hotel, and my mom and brother were suddenly there and had got us access to a private movie theater in the building and were set to play a series of movies. I feel like it was Star Wars. Although I was kind of upset because they had dinner without me while I dealt with the valet dilemna and so I wanted nothing to do with the movie until I had some dinner. In my dream I also started to re-read The Hobbit.

Dream Log 11.23.09

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Terrible T i v o

My girlfriend's mom gave us her old Tivo as a gift. We were excited about it, it was nice and thoughtful of her - we would now be able to ensure we get to see our favorite ghost hunter / ghost lab shows and random history channel specials. It has since proved to a drain on our time and money. In order to get it to work:
-Tivo yearly service - $129.00
-Because it is an older model, it was designed to connect with the Tivo service line through a land line. Getting it set up with a wireless adapter ($31.00) was not successful. In order to set it up the Tivo unit needed to complete guided set up, and the last step was to connect to their database.
-Linksys, we needed to configure the wirless router to open up some ports so the Tivo could work with the wireless adapter and finish the last step. This involved calling Linksys support - apparently our warranty was up, so would cost us $29.99 for a one time service or $39.99 for a six month service plan. We went with the six month plan. He opened up the ports, we rebooted the Tivo - it did not connect successfully.

So far we were $199.00 the hole with out a working Tivo. He mentioned he could pass this on to their sister company, where a team of engineers could solve our problem for a one time fee. We opted no, asked for a refund, and we were successful at that! We cancelled our Tivo service plan. We are over this costly and time consuming process to get an electriconic box to record more television shows for us, when we still have to finish our Twin Peaks, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia marathons. And when it comes down to it, we have an old fashioned VCR.

Tivo will be up on e-bay at some point soon if you want to give it a whirl.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009


We did a little short movie for a Second City video sketch contest. Feel free to check it out and vote for it if you enjoy it! http://chicago.metromix.com/home/article/vote-so-you-think/1614353/content. We're number #31 - (Bee)tnick Poet by Wood Sugars Comedy.